Morbid Curiosity
Effects of Morbid Curiosity on Perception, Attention and Reaction to Bad News
(Extended Abstract)
Over the last four decades, negativity has become the prevalent tone of television
news stories. There is evidence that this trend is not subsiding. Content analysis has shown
that negativity in the media, characterized as violent, tragic or morbid in tone, increased
sharply during the 1970s, jumped again during the 1980s, and continues to rise (Patterson,
1996). Perhaps a new low for morbid news was reached when Pennsylvania State Treasurer
Budd Dwyer, on the eve of his conviction for embezzlement, chose to commit suicide during
a televised news conference in 1987 -- and the graphic footage was broadcast in several
markets.
Previous research has indicated that morbid curiosity played a role in the selection
and attention to tragic and horror events. It is possible that viewers with different degrees of
morbid curiosity perceive, attend and react to bad news differently. Little attention has been
paid to this variable in the processing of television news, however.
A morbid curiosity is recognized as a mixture of compulsion, excitement and fear to
confront and to know about macabre subjects, such as death and terror (Zuckerman, 1984).
Zuckerman argued that the sheer mass consumption of negative media should refute the
notion that such media appealed to only a limited, sick segment of the population. Rather,
this type of curiosity is related to normal dimensions of personality such as extraversion and
sensation-seeking (SS), and in the excess, to pathological conditions of neuroticism and
psychoticism. A biological model for SS (Zuckerman, 1984) suggests that arousal experience
is sought by high sensation seekers to activate catecholamine in the brain, from initially low
levels found in unstimulating conditions. If Zuckerman's theorizing holds, then a similar
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Convention